2001.01.12
"Unfortunately, in my experience the only places without ice have southerners or californians."
Link of the Moment
Computer Stew is a really interesting, really fun web experiment. Basically, some guys decided to see that if they could make a daily show with less than $3000 in startup costs, using the Net for distribution and consumer grade hardware. The short answer is, yup, they can, and the result is sometimes funny as heck.
If you only have time to see one episode, check out notepad.exe, in all-singing all-dancing music video tribute to everyone's favorite Windows text editor. "N to the O to the T to the E, P to the A, D, E, X, E my Notepad!"
Link of the Other Moment
Working Together In "War Rooms" Doubles Teams' Productivity, University Of Michigan Researchers Find.
A War Room is a smallish 'common area', with desks, but open (no cubicles), preferably with lots of whiteboards, where a programming team can share information really easily. I've been on projects that use these, and it works really well. It's great for sharing information, and I think the slack factor is somewhat reduced-- in a good way. (via this article on Slashdot, where the conversation got to some other programmer setups)